24 hours too little

Ok, somehow life has this irritating tendency to throw you curveballs. When I whined about the lack of time to do stuff, here comes 1 whole big pile of stuff each I want to devote attention to, but just have not been able to do so.

1) My UK applications. What with imperfect information and the very tight deadline, plus the fact I've alreayd left school thus severed a very important link, this is my current top priority as the forms have to by hook or crook leave singapore by sept 12. I forsee myself taking off to settle this.
2) My regular driving lessons. Speaking of which, today I must have hit a milestone and many a kerb in the history of bad driving. I could have killed myself 10 times over today. My instructor was thoroughly disgusted.
3) Fix the computers in my house. At least the laptop is now once again up and running, but the other computers are down and thus all of us will clambour to use this main unit.
4) Advanced theory test. Must go and do the trial test then the test itself.
5) Various anime series. Almost at the end of full metal panic 1, still have fumouffu, last exile, hellsing? left after borrowing from neil. Also just got wing and am itching to watch that.
6) FF7. Playing now, printed the faq, all 77 pages of it, thanks to a very cooperative printer and an abundance of copy paper.
7) Waiting for the Strike Freedom and Infinte Justice models to come out to join up with my Destiny. May get Andy's Gaia custom or Akatsuki as well, kind of partial to these two.

Will add more once I remember.

Bus ride

Streetlight after streetlight,
casting their soft glow,
not enough to blind one's sight,
illuminating the head propped against the clear window.

Constant is the rumble of the engine,
the wheels grinning against the asphalt,
shaking, trembling, jolting, on it still steamed,
no change on the sea of blank faces even if it halts.

Behind couples entwine in their saccharine world,
housewives shake heads and gossip,
clubbers pout and pose, dressing bold,
elderly struggle to hang on amidst taken seats.

Salarymen with worry etched on their faces,
schoolgirls blush and giggle,
poseurs with low cut jeans and funky laces,
and those who blab loudly into their cellphones right in the middle.

With every hiss of the door,
more would pour in,
all types, all kinds, steps on the floor,
neither kith nor kin.

Away from the maddening crowd,
the seat beside me is empty.
The silence is loud,
and the reality is far too obvious, even for me.

Ng Zhao Yang
12.07 a.m. 16/08/05

I'm back. And how.

Now, we each go our separate ways

Well, ed's flying off on the 22nd, mog disrupted for medicine some time ago, don is in Australia earning his wings, most of us are stuck in the quagmire of NS.
Today, en route to air force school for the wet winching briefing, we stopped by MMI to drop Raymond off first. Somehow, as I stared at the hallowed halls of NUS through my wrecked up MID vehicle, those all too familiar pangs of jealousy and envy came over me. I'm sure if I took a walk around the premises I would have seen plenty of my former schoolmates. It's the same feeling I get everytime my dad drops Bertram off at RI, I stare longingly at the pearly gates of RJ until the car speeds off and whisks me to the comparatively duller sembawang air base medical centre.
Mog said some of the people in medicine now are according to him, have yet to grow out of their JC times. My take on this is that, let's take an example from the jan 2005 batch of NSFs. Assuming that this person was from Hawk in BMT, then Delta in OCS and after that disrupting for medicine, he is therefore unlikely to meet those from the spectrum of society, hence their view of society would be less "realistic" as they have yet to see both sides of the coin. Thus, possibly therein lies an explanation for their behaviour.
I think it's high time to stop moping. I think I got back my old fighting spirit to do the best I can. I want to try to go for the medical spec course, be eligible to drive on the open roads by jan next year, and once that is done take up another course to improve myself. I want to also aim to enter Cambridge law. I want to recapture my writing ability again. I want to be the best. I want to fufil my potential. I don't want to rot my 2 years away. I want to make good use of these 2 years.
I guess it's no use moaning about my situation. Loads of other NSF are worse off, so I should take every chance to improve myself. All in all, I don't want to lose out to others who have worse schedules than me and yet still manage to do things.
No use dredging up the past. I shall go forward to that brighter future.

Bitter

Imagine, if you could for a while, you're standing in the middle of the road in the hot sun, wearing your uniform, carrying a rifle, and your purpose is to stop cars and other vehicles and examine whether the people inside have proper authorisation to enter the installation you're guarding. Boring work, don't you think so? Well, now imagine doing that for 2 years of life. Not just any 2 years of your life, but 2 years of your youth. 2 years of your youth spent looking into vehicles. Would anyone voluntarily accept that?
Everyday as i see the RPs in my base come in to report sick I'm really glad I ended up being a medic and not any other man position. At least by interacting with the doctors and medical personel and equipment I'm learning stuff that is useful eventually when I leave the army. I really can't imagine how I can cope if I was made a RP. I'll probably mope around the whole day bemoaning my fate.
These days, I wonder how my medical centre survived before. The story goes that, our quality check is coming soon hence all the regulars are in a frenzy trying to make the place proper and put up a good show for the auditors, which means more work for us NSF.
Herein lies the paradox. Let's use simple economics to explain this situation. Normally, in an outside organisation, there would be an incentive to work hard as by doing so one can shine and hence maybe gain a promotion or a raise. Switch it back to my context, there are hardly any incentives, as pay is linked to rank, and rank is only gained after you have spent a certain amount of time in the service, thus the incentive to work hard is non-existent. Therefore the rational economic being would choose instead to do nothing in the medical centre as either way he'll still get paid, will eventually get a higher rank and thus pay, and move closer to his ORD date. But however, there exists disincentives such as extras, DB etc to ensure that we still work.
Thus, with such a model in place, it is obvious that a rational economic being would only work to a level that is enough to ensure that he does not get any disincentives, but not so much as he does not get anything for working so hard. In short he'll just do the bare minimum each day, with the ultimate goal of finally working towards his ORD date. This model does not incoporate human behaviour, maybe some people take immense pride when they do things and insist on doing everything well. I used to be one of them, but I figured it's no point. It's a harsh reality that in the army one will never be rewarded tangibly for good work, but when something goes wrong we get it triplefold. So why bother? I rather spend time trying to prevent myself from getting into trouble. It's quite sad really, to let go of my values of "do it well or don't do it at all", but I blame the circumstances solely for turning me this way.
In conclusion, the amount and quality of work is very low. Along comes the quality check, which requires a greater quality of work than what is being done now. So how do the superiors, who's rice bowls are affected by this quality check, ensure that the quality of work increase? Not by giving incentives, as there is no way for thme at their level to increase the pay, but by upping the disincentives, like deducting our hard earned off, thus now the bare minimum level of work is raised.
Any economic student can tell you that incentives work way better than disincentives. Therefore, it is evident that such a system is woefully inefficient. There is no profit motive to wokr hard. In a sense there are parallels to communism and the principal agent problem, both of which are highly inefficient.
Simple economics.
Another bugbear is that rank equals right. I have changed my stance, you want me to respect your rank, act your rank, and understand your men. To all my friends who become doctors and come abck in 7 years time to serve as MOs, never forget 1 thing, you and the medics are the same, all NSFs. Understand that there are many places in this world he'd rather be than where he is now, and treat him like a human being. Be someone worthy of respect. I may follow your orders, but it maybe just because if I don't you can make things difficult for me, that's all. You treat me like a human being, I feel good, I would work hard for you. You treat me like dirt, I'll still do the work for you, but shabbily, but not until the point you can blame me for it.
There are some days I feel like telling them, "look, you're not paying me enough for me to worry about this" but I know if I say that I'll off to DB before an army sergeant can yell "insurbodination" in my face.
Also, to all those people who read until here and are starting to pick up the phone to call the military police to come and arrest me, I hereby state once again that I believe that national service should stay and it serves its purpose. My point is, those people commanding us NSFs should try to understand the NSF's psyche, and thus provide us with an environment where rational economic beings can be fully maximised.
Besides, at the end of the day, you may be the RSM but a lowly coporal could end up being a hotshot lawyer after he ORDs. :)